SERMON PREACHED AT CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, NORWAY, MAINE
THE REV. ANNE STANLEY
6 APRIL 2008
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Acts 2:4a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
The longing these recent weeks, the longing for spring, real spring, has been intense. More intense than I’ve ever known it. Have you noticed? Have you felt it, too, this longing? When will spring come?..... How much more winter is there, anyway?
I was talking about winter with Pixie Williams the other day. About the mammoth mountains of concrete snow stacked up everywhere. About our longing for them to settle. And our delight at each sign of melting, day by day by day. Isn’t it fun? In fact, just that morning, she’d stepped outside onto their front doorstep. She looked down on the south side and what to her wondering eyes should she see but just enough snow melt to reveal a cluster of snowdrops. Little white flowery blobs reaching up to the sun---and to Pixie. It was a moment of pure joy for her. The ground on the north side of the step, she noticed, was still snow covered. After lunch, though, she went out again and, gazing down, lo and behold, the other side had also melted, and more little snowdrops greeted her. Another miracle. "They were there all along, growing, eating, sleeping, developing, waiting. Waiting to be discovered. Under all that snow, for all that time, they were there all along.” That's what we said to each other.
Was it like that for the disciples, during those early hours and days after Jesus’ resurrection? When Jesus popped up to various ones of his friends, out of the blue? A stunning miracle each time. Seven times in the gospels Jesus showed himself. But no sooner had he appeared than he vanished again. Unlike the snowdrops, Jesus came and quickly went.
How confusing it all must have been for those who didn’t see Jesus any more after his death, but then saw him, and then didn’t see him any more. There they were, two of Jesus’ followers, on the evening of that first day, Easter Day, two of Jesus’ followers, walking back home to Emmanus, full of what they’d heard, about Jesus’ death and how angels had told some of the women that Jesus was alive, and they were trying to make sense of it all. A stranger joined them and they thought he must have had his head in the sand since everything they told him was news to him, apparently. But after they’d explained all the day’s events to him, it seemed he knew more than he’d let on. “You fools, listen to your bible. Let your scriptures help you see!” And he spoke through those scriptures to help it all make sense to them.
Yet it wasn’t until they went into the house and he pulled up a chair alongside them at the table and they all sat down together for supper, and he took the bread and he blessed and broke the bread and he gave the bread to them to eat, it wasn’t until then that they recognized him. The fog lifted from their eyes then, like snow melting off the snowdrops, and they discovered Jesus among them.
He had been there on the road, speaking to them through the word of scripture. He had been with them as they walked and talked together. He was with them in the meal, and they recognized those familiar gestures----taking, blessing, breaking, giving.
He had been there all along.
But then he vanished. The snowdrops are still there by Rhys and Pixie’s doorstep. I saw them myself, yesterday afternoon. They’d been there all along, under the snow. And they will stay for awhile.
Jesus vanished, though. He appeared, and then he vanished from their sight.
And yet…..Don’t we discover him still, speaking his word to us through the scriptures? Don’t we know him to be with us still, as we walk and talk and gather together? Don’t we know him to be with us, too, in the sacred meal we share at each Eucharist, when the bread is taken, blessed, broken and given out? Isn’t he here all along? Still?
But also not here? And so we long for him, as we long this year for spring. Our faith is a mixture, isn’t it? Sometimes we hear Jesus’ voice in the scriptures, and other times we miss it altogether. Sometimes we sense him as we meander through our days and when we come together for worship, sometimes we just go through the motions. We let him fill us in the sacrament of his Body and Blood, whether we feel anything happen to us right then or not. The truth is, our faith is a mixture--of knowing and not knowing, of seeing and not seeing. Of Jesus here and yet not here. Of feeling his presence and yet longing for him to show up.
We long for Jesus and we wonder where he is. But while we wait, don’t we also sense that he is here all along?